


The First Cut Is The Deepest

by ilovejared



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Caring Sam, Hurt Dean, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Wincest - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-13
Updated: 2014-08-13
Packaged: 2018-02-13 00:37:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2130468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilovejared/pseuds/ilovejared
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the following prompt: Season 9!AU: The Mark of Cain changes Dean in more than one way - but one thing is for sure, he just doesn’t seem to feel pain the quite same way anymore (open interpretation). When a hunt goes a little sideways, Dean nearly bleeds out without telling Sam.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The First Cut Is The Deepest

You sit staring at the wall with unseeing eyes, one hand wrapped around the bottle of whiskey, trying not to think about anything but how long it’s going to take to drink yourself into oblivion. Your mind is your enemy because it wants to take that natural course that leads to memories, to all of the things you’ve done wrong, all of those things that you wish you could have back. And it hurts, the memories, the thoughts of little brother and love gone wrong.

So you take another sip of rich amber liquid and you don’t mind this burning because it means you’re burning away the present, the past, whatever it is that you’re trying to escape. You close your eyes and you see him looking at you with all of the concern and love that he always has but this time it’s different because when he looks and he speaks, “Drop the blade, Dean”, the words echo inside of you and sear themselves into your arteries, your veins. Just the echo of them is enough to cause nerves to fire and your lungs to tighten and you don’t understand why this is happening but you know what can make it stop. 

The blade, the goddamn blade.

When you held the blade in your hand, you felt the terrible power course through you and nothing could touch you, nothing could hurt, not after that first moment because you understood. The blade was an extension of yourself. You and the blade were the same. Cold, sharp, deadly.

No, nothing could hurt your physical self. Even now, with the blade taken from you, somewhere in Crowley’s hands, you can sense it calling to you with it’s murderous siren’s song because the mark on your arm beats in time to it’s terrible music. Then you remember Sam, calling your name, looking at you, speaking in a voice so gentle it cut through the savage cacophony that was echoing through your mind to kill, kill, and one look at him and you realized what you knew all along. That the universe began and ended with him and that the greatest pain you would ever know was the love of a brother.

He looks at you and your heart constricts, trying to continue it’s beating through the throes of a torture so sublime you can’t put a name to it. He speaks your name and you can’t draw a breath through the haze of agony a single word from his lips brings. You don’t let him touch you because you’re afraid that you might ignite into flames more searing than hell’s inferno. That fire you’ve felt for him all your life and the one you endured for forty years in the pit seems to have melded into a single blaze that will consume you if it goes unchecked.

So you ignore his attempts at conversation, knowing that it’s hurting him, but the pain you feel at his tenderness, his concern, is like a jagged shard of glass piercing your heart. You hide in your room with your silent companions, Jack and Jim, and you search for the one thing that might give you respite. The one thing that might stem the rolling tide of agony that has become the nexus of your existence with or without your brother.

A hunt.

It only takes two days for you to find evidence of a vampire’s nest only sixteen miles from the bunker. Twenty-four hours later you’re packing dead man’s blood and your favorite machete and you’re heading out.

"Dean!" You flinch slightly at the ripple of pain that shudders through your body. "Where the hell are you going?"

You tell him in clipped sentences and don’t even argue. “Come on, Sammy,” and if your voice breaks on his name, he doesn’t seem to notice.

The drive is silent except for the windshield wipers keeping time to the classic rock emanating from the impala’s speakers. His eyes are on you and his gaze burns as it traverses the planes of your face, rests on your lips then back up, trying to catch your eyes. You stare straight ahead and, soon enough, he does too.

You pull into a gas station and ask him to go inside and grab you a coffee. It makes you a little sad how readily he agrees, how he doesn’t ask questions because he wants to do this for you. You would move heaven and earth to change what is past and he knows that. You’ve seen it in the softening glances and the even softer words. Maybe your strangled, “Oh god,Sammy, I’m so sorry for what I did to you” was enough. No matter what he wants to pretend, you’re brothers. Bound to one another, like Cain to Abel.

When he enters the little store, you pull the Impala back on the road. You can’t have Sam near you right now. He’s too much of a distraction and you want(need) to take on these vamps alone. You’re a killer, through and through. Always have been, always will be. Now, more than ever, you need to kill, to destroy.

The house is old and decrepit. It looks like a place for monsters to be lurking and as you step onto the ramshackle front porch, you feel the adrenaline begin to pump through your veins. The machete feels good, right, in your hand and it may not sing like the first blade but it will do just fine.

Two vamps jump you when you walk through the door and you dispatch them in two vicious strokes. You feel ten feet tall, powerful, and you hope there’s more vamps hiding here. A lot more.

It’s a bloodbath and you revel in it. You feel nothing except pleasure as your blade cleaves through muscle and bone. They have weapons of their own but if they touch you with them, you don’t feel it. And when you’re done, you’re ankle deep in corpses and you feel better than you have in days. 

You wipe the blood off of your hands and head back to pick up Sam. He’s sitting on a bench in front of the store where you left him and you can see by the set of his shoulders, he’s angry. He turns toward you and it’s like a punch in the gut. The pain floods back like it never left and you look straight ahead as he climbs in the passenger seat.

"What the fuck, Dean? You bring me along and just dump me? What is going on with you? It’s the mark, isn’t it?" Sam scrubs tiredly at his face and his shoulders sag as you begin the drive back. "I wish you would just talk to me."

Sam sighs heavily at your silence and you can’t even risk a word. You’re light-headed with the pain of having him so close. You floor the gas pedal and make it back to the bunker in record time. 

Sam gets out and stalks away from the car. You want to follow and you don’t. You’re not sure how much more you can take. You should just drive and get away from him for both your sake’s. You’re Cain, for fuck’s sake, so what does that make your little brother?

In the end, you don’t move at all. Lethargy has set in, Maybe after the kill, you’re coming down from your adrenaline high. Sam’s probably been gone a good fifteen minutes and you just sit in your car meaning to drive away or go inside, you’re not sure.

Then Sam is opening the car door and you sag into his arms. You hiss as your body throbs where it touches his.

His voice comes from a distance. “Oh god, Dean. You’re hurt. There’s so much blood.” Then he’s lifting you like you are a child and laying you in the back seat. You’re mildly curious to know what he’s fussing about and you look down and see the deep gash that runs from side to side across your lower abdomen. Sam is trying to staunch the blood, but it keeps flowing across his fingers.

You feel no pain except where Sam touches you.

"I’ve got to get you to a hospital, Dean." The impala seems to fly then and you look at the back of Sam’s head and you want to reach out and touch his hair, stroke it, knowing it will hurt but you don’t care. You stretch out fingers, dripping blood, but he’s too far away.

"Be still, Dean. Jesus, why didn’t you tell me they had sliced you open?"

Your answer is a gurgling cough, blood coating your lips as well as your fingers now.

"Hold on, Dean. We’re here." Then he’s lifting you again and you gasp at the contact. He’s yelling frantically for a doctor and he places you on a gurney and takes your hand in his.

It feels like the skin is being flayed off your fingers but you grasp his hand even tighter, grimacing against the pain. He’s leaning over you and his tears are falling on your face like acid rain. You’ve always hated to see Sam cry and you reach up to wipe a tear from his cheek. It doesn’t matter that you feel his tears eating away the flesh from your bones, it only matters that Sam is hurting. Because of you.

The doctors are working on you now and Sam’s hand is gone. You look for him and he’s standing just out of reach, tears streaming down his face and he’s saying something over and over.

"Don’t leave me, Dean. Don’t you leave me."

You close your eyes then because the morphine is taking effect and you want to tell him not to worry. That you’ll be fine. You know you won’t die, can’t die. Not while you have the mark. 

You reach out blindly and you know when Sam grasps your hand again because even the drugs can’t block out the pain. It’s duller but still there.

He touches his lips to your forehead and you shudder because he’s branding you with his touch.

Of course, he marked you with his touch all of those years ago when your mother laid him in your arms. And, again, when you carried him out of that burning house and every time he went away and came back. 

You’ve borne his mark on your heart for what seemed an eternity.

You’ll gladly live with the pain.


End file.
